Good relationships between employees and their employer are crucial for the long-term success of an organization, including a government. By conducting the present budget negotiations transparently and respectfully, Governor Walker could have laid the foundation for many years of balanced state budgets, without destroying the relationship between the state and its employees. Especially pernicious is his insistence on limiting collective bargaining rights even after unions have agreed to his proposals. This is political bravado; Walker is more concerned with earning headlines than actual policy reform.

Political scientist Barry Cooper, another of the academics employed by the so-called Calgary School at the University of Calgary, has written an article for the Calgary Herald lambasting public employees for everything from Canada's economic woes to the fall of Rome. Cooper bases his fanciful screed on a report by something called the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, which he refers to as "a feisty Winnipeg think-tank."

When not insulting public employees with allegations of "laziness," "extortion" and an apparently powerful and sneaky thirst for taxpayer-subsidized alcohol, the publicly employed University of Calgary teacher rightly points out that the Frontier Centre's attack on public sector wage increases has been widely reported in the mainstream media.

The Frontier Centre has about as much credibility as the Fraser Institute, or any of the other taxpayer funded think tanks that prop up the Harper government. His own mother would be less biased.

But given that the "thinkers" are spreading their nonsense around the media - unions bad, Harper good, ugh!, we are obviously being softened on any notion of a middle class revolt.

Too bad for Harper and Cooper that Canadians will be walking like Egyptians next election.